Cia Spies On Trade, U.s. Says

Agency Takes Aim On Economic Data

WASHINGTON - — U.S. officials admit they use the CIA clandestinely to find out the trade negotiating positions of other countries, including France - and they say Paris does the same.

"They do it to us and we do it to them," a senior Clinton administration official said on Wednesday.

Such gathering of economic data has "always been a legitimate use of intelligence services," he said.

France has accused five U.S. officials, including four diplomats, of industrial and political spying and asked them to leave the country.

The State Department dismissed the accusations as unwarranted. U.S. officials said they see an important difference between how the United States and France conduct business spying.

Washington does not send the CIA and other U.S. intelligence services to pilfer commercial secrets to pass to U.S. corporations to help them compete abroad, U.S. officials said.

In contrast they said that France, almost more than any country, has used its intelligence agents to help French businesses, many of which are government-owned.

Underlying the flap have been public and private complaints from Washington to Paris over aggressive French intelligence actions taken against U.S. companies, present and former CIA officials said. "This is [French) retaliation for a decade of our rubbing their nose in it," one retired CIA official said.

A U.S. official familiar with the situation said Paris might be responding to non-intelligence support that the administration was providing U.S. companies. "The French don't like the very aggressive stance the Clinton administration has taken pushing contracts for American companies, and may have come from the incorrect assumption that U.S. intelligence was aiding and abetting them," the official said.

The clash with France could be a sign of conflicts to come as the end of the Cold War has led to increased focus by governments and intelligence agencies on economic and business competition, officials said.

There are some areas where CIA information is used to help U.S. industry, but the material does not go directly to the firms, U.S. officials said.

If the CIA learned that corrupt practices were being used in a way that hurt U.S. business, it would pass the information to the State Department to convey to another government.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that the CIA discovered last spring that the French were offering bribes to Brazilian officials in connection with a $1.4 billion telecommunications project in the Amazon area.

After the matter was brought to the attention of the Brazilian government, the U.S. company, Raytheon Corp., matched the French bid by Thompson CSF and won the award.